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Terror descends on Mumbai as its female race is ruthlessly slaughtered one by one. There are no hints, no patterns, almost a perfect crime. Priya Mehra, a brave and astute IPS officer, is dispatched to apprehend the serial killer before it's too late. But she has no idea that the heinous murders will soon be linked to her past. Priya, accompanied by the handsome billionaire Neil Singhania and her rude but intelligent colleague Arjun Nair, must race against the clock before it's too late. _________________________________ "Why did you do this to us?" She asked while struggling to get out of his grip. Her eyes were red and swollen. He clenched her hair, tightly. "Revenge, darling," He looked like a maniac. Psychopath. "You are such a bastard. She will hunt you down," she shouted back at him, and just then he slit open her throat smoothly with a surgical knife. "I am waiting," he replied to her lifeless body and kept a vendetta mask near her which had 'Masked Devil' stamped on it. He had a burning desire for vengeance and now he was ready to play his game. _________________________________
Author's POV:
(Somewhere in Mumbai)
He became a killer when his mother died during childbirth. She'd been in labour for over nineteen hours. The many attempts to spit him out into the world tortured her body. But he'd resisted, refusing to make that crucial journey out of her womb, almost as if he knew the world would be cruel to him.
When he finally emerged from his mother's womb, everyone warned his father that he was a bad omen. Regardless, his father adored him. They both were the perfect father-son duo until his father surprised him with a new mother for his fifth birthday. His father married another woman, thinking that his son would now get some motherly love from the kind woman.
At home, however, the boy was experiencing the polar opposite: when his father was away on business, the little boy saw his new mother with her various lovers. When she realised the boy was silently watching everything, the cunning woman played it smart. She began lying about the boy stealing money and calling her names. She complained to his father about how the boy insulted her in front of others, which was never true.
His father believed the new young wife because he couldn't fathom the thought that his adult wife would be lying to him and began beating the little boy to tame him. The little boy would cry and plead, but his father wouldn't show any mercy to him.
Four terribly long years passed. The torture went from occasional to routine. But there came a point where he couldn't take the pain any longer. So, he decided to escape. He took the little money his father had in a small case in their house and went to the nearby railway station.
From Solapur, he reached Mumbai, the city of stumbling people. The new city and its culture amazed him to a great extent. He would often stare at families that passed by him and wonder to himself. Some of them had children who threw tantrums when they didn't get what they wanted. The boy wrinkled his nose in disgust. It was funny how people took their parents for granted; there were children in the world with no parents.
He roamed around, enjoying his newfound freedom. What he didn't know was the city of dreams had only nightmares in store for him.
He was ten years old when he met the devil for the first time. An old beggar kidnapped him. He molested him and left him to die on a lonely street at night. Miraculously, the boy survived. He didn't realise what had happened to him until he grew up. At that point, all he remembered was the blinding pain that had surrounded his abdominal region. He didn't realise that the pages of his fate had worse things written for him.
He grew up in the streets, collecting plastic and garbage, and ate whatever he could get his hands on. He did not know what he was going to do with his life until he ran into the devil again on a lonely night. He had his first sexual experience at fifteen, when he was strangling the old beggar as revenge for taking away his innocence.
The old beggar had struggled, attempting to break free from his unyielding grip. Seeing the old man's struggle, he felt a strange but pleasant sensation. As he sank deeper and deeper into the throes of ecstasy, his mind shut down. The fact that the old man's body had no life left in it didn't matter to him; he was too busy enjoying the unfamiliar sensation. It wasn't until he was completely spent that he realised the old beggar's eyes had turned within his skull and all he could see were the whites. He knew what he had done, but when he searched for guilt or pain inside of him, all he felt was satisfaction. He wasn't ready to let go of the feeling, so he decided to make the best of it.
The young boy boarded the next train to Solapur to meet his lovely stepmother. The next morning, he arrived at his destination and waited until the sky turned dark.
The much-awaited night fell and he made his way to the building that had once been his home. But now that he thought of it, the home was a foreign thing to him. He didn't even know what he could call home. His home had once been his father, but now? Nothing.
He sneaked in and overheard his stepmother moaning out a name that wasn't his father's. 'She is still the same,' he thought bitterly. It triggered him even more. She ruined his life.
He waited for her lover to leave, and when he was sure that his path was clear, he tiptoed to her room. Using a cable wire, he grabbed her throat from behind. His eyes red with fury. He chocked her until her eyes were devoid of any soul.
The pleasure he felt was a lot more than what he was expecting. He unzipped himself and released the growing bulge in his pants. Within seconds, he was running his hands over himself while looking at his dead stepmother's terrified eyes. Soon, he was done and this orgasm was unlike the one he had the day before.
Before leaving, he set fire to the house to destroy all the evidence. Despite having spent most his life in slums, he was intelligent. He didn't bother waiting to see his father's reaction because he knew his father was still a fool. He would sit and weep over the death of his unfaithful second wife.
While going back to Mumbai he thought about his mother. There didn't go a day when he didn't think about his mother, the one who others claimed was killed by him. If she had been alive, his life would have been completely different. He knew she wouldn't be pleased if she knew about his nature, so he put a full-stop on his desires. Little did he know it was just the start of something much bigger that would affect many people's lives.
He was twenty-one when he began working as a salesman for a low-cost clothing company. He smoothly controlled his rage and strange urges to go straight, to leave his past behind and began a new life in the city. But Mumbai was hard; as hard as a diamond. And like a diamond, it could shine brightly upon you, or cut through you to the bone if you allowed it to. The young man, in his naïve attempt to step away from his past, let his guard down and allowed one of Mumbai's sharp tentacles to sting him. Bewildered, the young man then reacted in a manner that a scorpion would when challenged to battle, that was to sting his adversary back with equal, venomous fury.
The afternoon was the time when salesmen would visit housing societies and try to sell their wares to ordinary housewives. On a Saturday afternoon, he, like others, made his way to a housing colony but the housewife he met was not like the others. She She tried to get him to bed, which reminded him of his stepmother who used to cheat on his father, and it triggered his repressed urges. He couldn't stop himself from killing the slutty housewife with his bare hands. While performing his skilled work, he had another earth-shattering orgasm.
After murdering her, he removed all traces of evidence and stuffed her body into a plastic bag. He had the housewife vanish rather than make it look like a botched robbery. As a result, he stole all the house's valuables. He was fortunate to discover two lakh rupees in cash and some gold bangles tucked away in the cupboard's corner. He waited until late at night till the night-duty watchman had gone to sleep and then walked out of the building unnoticed, carrying the heavy plastic bag over his shoulder.
He disposed of the body and walked away with the plastic bag, which still contained something. Something which would remind him about his first prey.
The next morning, a rag picker noticed someone floating in the dirty drainage river. When he looked at it closely, his breathing became ragged, and he let out a terrified scream. It was the headless body of a woman dressed in a household gown.
The missing woman's husband returned home after two days after his business trip. He was worried to death because his wife had not been returning his calls and no one knew where she was. He broke open the front door with the help of the local police and discovered that everything else was in order, except for the cash and jewellery in the cupboard, which had gone missing along with his wife.
The police investigated and, much to the husband's surprise, discovered that the wife had a reputation for sleeping around. The finger of suspicion was now pointed at the husband, but because he had a solid alibi and there didn't appear to be any sign of struggle or wrongdoing, the overburdening investigating officers quickly concluded that the housewife had fled the city with one of her many lovers. The bereaved husband accepted this conclusion and moved on with his life.
The body of the headless woman was never identified, and it became one of the many unsolved cases.
Only to be solved later when Mumbai was shaking in fear.
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Her fiance and her best friend worked together and set her up. She lost everything and died in the street. However, she was reborn. The moment she opened her eyes, her husband was trying to strangle her. Luckily, she survived that. She signed the divorce agreement without hesitation and was ready for her miserable life. To her surprise, her mother in this life left her a great deal of money. She turned the tables and avenged herself. Everything went well in her career and love when her ex-husband came to her.
For three years, Shane and Yvonne were wed, sharing heated nights, while his devotion clung to his ex. Yvonne strove to be a dutiful wife, yet their marriage felt hollow, built on desire rather than real warmth. All changed when she became pregnant, only for Shane to thrust her onto the operating table, warning, “Either you or the baby survives!” Broken by his cruelty, she vanished in grief and later returned, radiantly accomplished, leaving everyone awestruck. Haunted by remorse, Shane begged for another chance, but Yvonne only smiled and replied, “I’m sorry, men no longer interest me.”
"You're a creepy bastard." His eyes smolder me and his answering grin is nothing short of beautiful. Deadly. "Yet you hunger for me. Tell me, this appetite of yours, does it always tend toward 'creepy bastards'?" **** Widower and ex-boss to the Mafia, Zefiro Della Rocca, has an unhealthy fixation on the woman nextdoor. It began as a coincidence, growing into mere curiosity, and soon, it was an itch he couldn't ignore, like a quick fix of crack for an addict. He didn't know her name, but he knew every inch of her skin, how it flushed when she climaxed, her favourite novel and that every night she contemplated suicide. He didn't want to care, despising his rapt fascination of the woman. She was in love with her abusive husband. She was married, bound by a contract to the Bratva's hitman. She was off-limits. But when Zefiro wanted something, it was with an intensity that bordered on madness. He obsessed, possessed, owned. There'd be bloodshed if he touched her, but the sight of blood always did fascinate him. * When Susanna flees from her husband, she stumbles right into the arms of her devilishly handsome neighbour with a brooding glare. He couldn't stand her, but she needed him, if she was ever going to escape her husband who now wanted her dead. Better the devil you know than the angel you don't. She should have recalled that before hopping into Zefiro's car and letting him whisk her away to Italy. Maybe then, she wouldn't have started an affair with him. He was the only man who touched her right, and the crazy man took no small pains in ensuring he would be the last.
Natalie used to think she could melt Connor’s icy heart, but she was sorely mistaken. When at last she decided to leave, she discovered that she was pregnant. Even so, she chose to quietly leave his world, prompting Connor to mobilize all of his resources and expand his business to a global scale—all in a bid to find her. But there was no trace of Natalie. Connor slowly spiraled into madness, turning the city upside down and leaving chaos in his wake. Natalie finally surfaced years later, with wealth and power of her own, only to find herself entangled with Connor once again.
Due to the plight of her family, Phoebe had no choice but to embark on the path of selling herself. In an accident, she had a tangled night with Alexander. Everything began to derail, and even if she fled to the ends of the earth, she would still be found by him and entangled... *** Phoebe screamed in frustration, "What do you want from me?" What was this supposed to be? He raised an eyebrow wickedly. "What do I want? You'll find out soon enough." With that, he hoisted her up and carried her back into the office. The door slammed shut with a kick, and he cleared the desk with a sweep of his arm before laying her down on it, his body pinning hers in place, completely trapping her in his grasp. Every cell in his body was telling him he wanted her. He wanted to claim her again. This time, there would be no escape for her-he wouldn't let her slip away. Never again. If he had suffered for five years, then this woman wouldn't get off easily either!
"Never let anyone treat you like shit!" I learned that the hard way. For three years, I lived with my in-laws. They didn't treat me as their son-in-law but as a slave. I put up with everything because of my wife, Yolanda Lambert. She was the light of my life. Unfortunately, my whole world came crashing down the day I caught my wife cheating on me. I have never been so heartbroken. To have my revenge, I revealed my true identity. I was none other than Liam Hoffman—the heir of a family with trillions of dollars in assets! The Lamberts were utterly shocked after the big reveal. They realized what fools they had been for treating me like trash. My wife even knelt down and begged for my forgiveness. What do you think I did? Did I take her back or made her suffer? Find out!